Carbonic anhydrase-mimetic bolaamphiphile self-assembly for CO2 hydration and sequestration

Bio-Inspired Functional Materials for Environmental Applications

With the global population expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, there is an urgent need for advanced materials that can address existing and developing environmental issues. Many current synthesis processes are environmentally unfriendly and often lack control over size, shape, and phase of resulting materials. Based on knowledge from biological synthesis and assembly processes, as well as their resulting functions (e.g., photosynthesis, self-healing, anti-fouling, etc.), researchers are now beginning to leverage these biological blueprints to advance bio-inspired pathways for functional materials for water treatment, air purification and sensing. The result has been the development of novel materials that demonstrate enhanced performance and address sustainability. Here, an overview of the progress and potential of bio-inspired methods toward functional materials for environmental applications is provided. The challenges and opportunities for this rapidly expanding field and aim to provide a valuable resource for researchers and engineers interested in developing sustainable and efficient processes and technologies is discussed.

Engineering Zinc-Organic Frameworks-Based Artificial Carbonic Anhydrase with Ultrafast Biomimetic Centers for Efficient Hydration Reactions

Constructing effective and robust biocatalysts with carbonic anhydrase (CA)-mimetic activities offers an alternative and promising pathway for diverse CO2-related catalytic applications. However, there is very limited success has been achieved in controllably synthesizing CA-mimetic biocatalysts. Here, inspired by the 3D coordination environments of CAs, this study reports on the design of an ultrafast ZnN3-OH2 center via tuning the 3D coordination structures and mesoporous defects in a zinc-dipyrazolate framework to serve as new, efficient, and robust CA-mimetic biocatalysts (CABs) to catalyze the hydration reactions. Owing to the structural advantages and high similarity with the active center of natural CAs, the double-walled CAB with mesoporous defects displays superior CA-like reaction kinetics in p-NPA hydrolysis (V0 = 445.16 nM s-1, Vmax = 3.83 µM s-1, turnover number: 5.97 × 10-3 s-1), which surpasses the by-far-reported metal-organic frameworks-based biocatalysts. This work offers essential guidance in tuning 3D coordination environments in artificial enzymes and proposes a new strategy to create high-performance CA-mimetic biocatalysts for broad applications, such as CO2 hydration/capture, CO2 sensing, and abundant hydrolytic reactions.

Lipopeptides as tools in catalysis, supramolecular, materials and medicinal chemistry

Lipopeptides are amphiphilic peptides in which an aliphatic chain is attached to either the C or N terminus of peptides. Their self-assembly - into micelles, vesicles, nanotubes, fibres or nanobelts - leads to applications in nanotechnology, catalysis or medicinal chemistry. Self-organization of lipopeptides is dependent on both the length of the lipid tail and the amino acid sequence, in which the chirality of the peptide sequence can be transmitted into the supramolecular species. This Review describes the use of lipopeptides to design synthetic advanced dynamic supramolecular systems, nanostructured materials or self-responsive delivery systems in the area of medical biotechnology. We examine the influence of external stimuli, the ability of lipopeptide-derived structures to adapt over time and their application as medicinal agents with antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral or anticancer activities. Finally, we discuss the catalytic efficiency of lipopeptides, with the aim of building minimal synthetic enzymes, and recent efforts to incorporate metals into lipopeptide assemblies.

Rh-coordinated histidyl bolaamphiphile assembly: a catalyst for the isomerization of cis-stilbene and cis-alkene

In this study, we present a colloidal assembly of histidyl bolaamphiphiles whose imidazoles coordinate with rhodium ions (HisC7[Rh]) to exhibit catalytic isomerization activity for cis-stilbene and cis-alkene molecules. The histidyl bolaamphiphiles self-assemble to form a soft scaffold that functions analogously to an apoenzyme. This scaffold exposes multiple histidyl imidazoles and carboxylates on its surface, to which rhodium ions bind, generating catalytically active sites. The Rh coordination with the biochemical functional groups was verified through comprehensive vibrational spectroscopy and calorimetry. The colloidal HisC7[Rh] demonstrated a significant catalytic effect on the isomerization of cis- to trans-stilbene under mild H2 conditions, resulting in 69% yield of trans-stilbene. In contrast, when Rh(cod)2BF4 was employed as a control catalyst, only the hydrogenated products of bibenzyl were obtained. These findings underscore the crucial role of histidyl motifs in exhibiting unique catalytic isomerization activity through the coordination with Rh. The catalytic activity of HisC7[Rh] is governed by several factors, such as rhodium content, solvent composition, temperature, and H2 pressure. Moreover, HisC7[Rh] displayed moderate isomerization activity towards not only stilbene but also unsaturated fatty acid isomers, highlighting its expansive potential as an isomerization catalyst.

Crystalline Metal-Peptide Networks: Structures, Applications, and Future Outlook

Metal-peptide networks (MPNs), which are assembled from short peptides and metal ions, are considered one of the most fascinating metal-organic coordinated architectures because of their unique and complicated structures. Although MPNs have considerable potential for development into versatile materials, they have not been developed for practical applications because of several underlying limitations, such as designability, stability, and modifiability. In this review, we summarise several important milestones in the development of crystalline MPNs and thoroughly analyse their structural features, such as peptide sequence designs, coordination geometries, cross-linking types, and network topologies. In addition, potential applications such as gas adsorption, guest encapsulation, and chiral recognition are introduced. We believe that this review is a useful survey that can provide insights into the development of new MPNs with more sophisticated structures and novel functions.

Carbonic Anhydrase-Mimicking Supramolecular Nanoassemblies for Developing Carbon Capture Membranes

As a ubiquitous family of enzymes with high performance in converting carbon dioxide (CO₂) into bicarbonate, carbonic anhydrases (CAs) sparked enormous attention for carbon capture. Nevertheless, the high cost and operational instability of CAs hamper their practical relevance, and the utility of CAs is mainly limited to aqueous applications where CO₂-to-bicarbonate conversion is possible. Taking advantage of the chemical motif that endows CA-like active sites (metal-coordinated histidine), here we introduce a new line of high-performance gas separation membranes with CO₂-philic behavior. We first self-assembled a histidine-based bolaamphiphile (His-Bola) molecule in the aqueous phase and coordinated the resulting entities with divalent zinc. Optimizing the supramolecular synthesis conditions ensured that the resultant nanoparticles (His-NPs) exhibit high CO₂ affinity and catalytic activity. We then exploited the His-NPs as nanofillers to enhance the separation performance of Pebax MH 1657. The hydrogen-bonding interactions allowed the dispersion of His-NPs within the polymer matrix uniformly, as confirmed by microscopic, spectroscopic, and thermal analyses. The imidazole and amine functionalities of His-NPs enhanced the solubility of CO₂ molecules in the polymer matrix. The CA-mimic active sites of His-NPs nanozymes, on the other hand, catalyzed the reversible hydration of CO₂ molecules in humid conditions, facilitating their transport across the membranes. The resulting nanocomposite membranes displayed excellent CO₂ separation performance, with a high level of stability. At a filling ratio as low as 3 wt %, we achieved a CO₂ permeability of >145 Barrer and a CO₂/N₂ selectivity of >95 with retained performance under humid continuous gas feeds. The bio-inspired approach presented in this work offers a promising platform for designing durable and highly selective CO₂ capture membranes.

ZIF-90 with biomimetic Zn-N coordination structures as an effective nanozyme to mimic natural hydrolase

Inspired by the structures of enzymes, a fast and robust strategy for generating ZIF-90 metallo-nanozymes is presented. The Zn-N coordination structure in ZIF-90 can closely imitate the catalytic center of a natural zinc-based hydrolase. As expected, ZIF-90 possesses potent hydrolase-mimicking activity, high stability and excellent recyclability.

Self-Assembling Peptidic Bolaamphiphiles for Biomimetic Applications

Bolaamphiphile, which is a class of amphiphilic molecules, has a unique structure of two hydrophilic head groups at the ends of the hydrophobic center. Peptidic bolaamphiphiles that employ peptides or amino acids as their hydrophilic groups exhibit unique biochemical activities when they self-organize into supramolecular structures, which are not observed in a single molecule. The self-assembled peptidic bolaamphiphiles hold considerable promise for imitating proteins with biochemical activities, such as specific affinity toward heterogeneous substances, a catalytic activity similar to a metalloenzyme, physicochemical activity from harmonized amino acid segments, and the capability to encapsulate genes like a viral vector. These diverse activities give rise to large research interest in biomaterials engineering, along with the synthesis and characterization of the assembled structures. This review aims to address the recent progress in the applications of peptidic bolaamphiphile assemblies whose densely packed peptide motifs on their surface and their stacked hydrophobic centers exhibit unique protein-like activity and designer functionality, respectively.

Biocatalysts Based on Peptide and Peptide Conjugate Nanostructures

Peptides and their conjugates (to lipids, bulky N-terminals, or other groups) can self-assemble into nanostructures such as fibrils, nanotubes, coiled coil bundles, and micelles, and these can be used as platforms to present functional residues in order to catalyze a diversity of reactions. Peptide structures can be used to template catalytic sites inspired by those present in natural enzymes as well as simpler constructs using individual catalytic amino acids, especially proline and histidine. The literature on the use of peptide (and peptide conjugate) α-helical and β-sheet structures as well as turn or disordered peptides in the biocatalysis of a range of organic reactions including hydrolysis and a variety of coupling reactions (e.g., aldol reactions) is reviewed. The simpler design rules for peptide structures compared to those of folded proteins permit ready ab initio design (minimalist approach) of effective catalytic structures that mimic the binding pockets of natural enzymes or which simply present catalytic motifs at high density on nanostructure scaffolds. Research on these topics is summarized, along with a discussion of metal nanoparticle catalysts templated by peptide nanostructures, especially fibrils. Research showing the high activities of different classes of peptides in catalyzing many reactions is highlighted. Advances in peptide design and synthesis methods mean they hold great potential for future developments of effective bioinspired and biocompatible catalysts.

A Zinc Coordination Complex Mimicking Carbonic Anhydrase for CO2 Hydrolysis and Sequestration

Carbonic anhydrase (CA) mimicking is an effective and environmentally friendly strategy for carbon dioxide sequestration. Herein, we developed a nonanuclear CA-mimetic zinc coordination complex (1) which possesses a coordination environment similar to that of CA's catalytically active zinc sites. Complex 1 exhibited excellent reusability, solvent and thermal stability, and gram-scale synthesis, which are essential for practical applications. It was found that complex 1 exhibited outstanding catalytic performance that is much better in comparison to that of the popular CA-mimetic compound Zn-cyclen and comparable to that of the reported metal-organic frameworks (e.g., CFA-1). Moreover, we found that its catalytic activity can be significantly improved via OAc^-/OH^- exchange and particle size reduction treatment. This study provides important guidance for the design of highly efficient CA-mimetic materials.

Reversible photoresponsive activity of a carbonic anhydrase mimic

The carbonic anhydrase (CA) enzyme reversibly transforms carbon dioxide and water to a carbonate ion and a proton. Photoresponsive enzyme mimics, where the CA-activity can be turned on and off reversibly with light, have not been reported so far. We have designed an active site mimic that offers reversible control of the catalytic activity using light. Moreover, in the presence of a cationic polymer, we have demonstrated that the CA-activity was further enhanced by stabilizing the transition state with the cis-form of the enzyme mimic which can catalyze the hydration of gaseous CO2.

Iridium-Coordinated Histidyl Bolaamphiphile Self-Assemblies as Heterogeneous Catalysts for Water Oxidation

Catalysts that can promote oxygen evolution from water are necessary for green energy production. In this study, colloidal heterogeneous catalysts for oxygen evolution were prepared by coordination of Ir species to self-assemblies of histidyl bolaamphiphiles. When dissolved in water, the histidyl bolaamphiphiles self-assembled to form particulate structures with the exposure of densely packed histidine imidazoles on their surface. Subsequent coordination of the Ir species to the bolaamphiphile assembly gave rise to catalytic activity toward the oxygen evolution reaction. The oxygen evolution was examined by using the catalytic assemblies in the presence of a sacrificial oxidant, cerium ammonium nitrate. The Ir-coordinated assemblies showed a turnover frequency of 13 min^-1 , which was comparable to those previously reported for molecular water oxidation catalysts. The catalytic activity increased with increasing histidine imidazole/Ir molar ratio, which suggested that multiple coordination of Ir to imidazoles facilitated the formation of active Ir intermediates. This study demonstrates the feasibility of constructing catalytically active interfaces from colloidal bolaamphiphile assemblies with biochemical ligands.

Catalytic peptide assemblies

Self-assembly of molecules often results in new emerging properties. Even very short peptides can self-assemble into structures with a variety of physical and structural characteristics. Remarkably, many peptide assemblies show high catalytic activity in model reactions reaching efficiencies comparable to those found in natural enzymes by weight. In this review, we discuss different strategies used to rationally develop self-assembled peptide catalysts with natural and unnatural backbones as well as with metal-containing cofactors.

Highly stable and self-repairing membrane-mimetic 2D nanomaterials assembled from lipid-like peptoids

An ability to develop sequence-defined synthetic polymers that both mimic lipid amphiphilicity for self-assembly of highly stable membrane-mimetic 2D nanomaterials and exhibit protein-like functionality would revolutionize the development of biomimetic membranes. Here we report the assembly of lipid-like peptoids into highly stable, crystalline, free-standing and self-repairing membrane-mimetic 2D nanomaterials through a facile crystallization process. Both experimental and molecular dynamics simulation results show that peptoids assemble into membranes through an anisotropic formation process. We further demonstrated the use of peptoid membranes as a robust platform to incorporate and pattern functional objects through large side-chain diversity and/or co-crystallization approaches. Similar to lipid membranes, peptoid membranes exhibit changes in thickness upon exposure to external stimuli; they can coat surfaces in single layers and self-repair. We anticipate that this new class of membrane-mimetic 2D nanomaterials will provide a robust matrix for development of biomimetic membranes tailored to specific applications.

Biomimetic membranes can be used for various applications such as sensors and separations. Here, Chen et al. report the assembly of lipid-like peptoids into stable and self-repairing 2D membrane nanomaterials that change in thickness when under external stimuli.

Metal organic frameworks mimicking natural enzymes: a structural and functional analogy

In this review, we have portrayed the structure, synthesis and applications of a variety of biomimetic MOFs from an unprecedented angle.

Peroxidase-like oxidative activity of a manganese-coordinated histidyl bolaamphiphile self-assembly

A peroxidase-like catalyst was constructed through the self-assembly of histidyl bolaamphiphiles coordinated to Mn(2+) ions. The prepared catalyst exhibited oxidation activity for the organic substrate o-phenylenediamine (OPD) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The histidyl bolaamphiphiles of bis(N-alpha-amido-histidine)-1,7-heptane dicarboxylates self-assembled to make spherical structures in an aqueous solution. Subsequent association of Mn(2+) ions with the histidyl imidazoles in the self-assembly produced catalytic active sites. The optimal Mn(2+) ion concentration was determined and coordination of the Mn(2+) ion with multiple histidine imidazoles was investigated using spectroscopy analysis. The activation energy of the produced catalysts was 55.0 kJ mol(-1), which was comparable to other peroxidase-mimetic catalysts. A detailed kinetics study revealed that the prepared catalyst followed a ping-pong mechanism and that the turnover reaction was promoted by increasing the substrate concentration. Finally, application of the prepared catalyst for glucose detection was demonstrated through cascade enzyme catalysis. This study demonstrated a facile way to prepare an enzyme-mimetic catalyst through the self-assembly of an amphiphilic molecule containing amino acid segments.

Biomimetic Catalytic and Sensing Cascades Built with Two Designer Bolaamphiphilic Self-Assemblies

A system performing both a catalytic hydrolysis reaction and the direct optical monitoring of the product was created by the combination of two bolaamphiphile self-assemblies. Two bolaamphiphilic self-assemblies were applied as a biomimetic catalyst of p-nitrophenyl acetate (p-NPA) hydrolysis and an optical sensor probe that detects p-NPA hydrolysis through photoluminescence quenching by p-nitrophenol (p-NP), the product of p-NPA hydrolysis. One bolaamphiphilic self-assembly with a histidine moiety catalytically hydrolyzed the p-NPA substrate, and the other self-assembly of tyrosyl bolaamphiphile monitored the product of p-NP by photoluminescence quenching. The progression of the reaction and quenching degree were adjusted by controlling the quantity of histidyl and tyrosyl self-assemblies, respectively. The reaction and subsequent sensing cascade could be interrupted by a reducing agent. The addition of NaBH4 induced the chemical conversion of p-NP to p-aminophenol, which retarded photoluminescence quenching. Thus, it was demonstrated that hydrolysis of an organic substrate and subsequent monitoring of the hydrolysis reaction could be achieved through a combination of independent bolaamphiphilic self-assemblies. This study demonstrated the construction of a catalytic reaction and detection system incorporating designer biomimetic self-assemblies whose functionalities were devised to realize deliberate functions.

Controlled self-assembly of a pyrene-based bolaamphiphile by acetate ions: from nanodisks to nanofibers by fluorescence enhancement

In this paper, a pyrene moiety is incorporated into a bolaamphiphile to form a novel molecule denoted PRB. Above the critical micelle concentration, PRB forms nanodisks in the aqueous solution. The addition of acetate ions induces a morphological change in self-assembled aggregates, which convert into nanofibers with a diameter of several nanometers. More interestingly, along with the morphological change, the fluorescence of the assemblies was enhanced concomitantly, which can be attributed to the binding effect of acetate ions on pyridinium head groups of PRB.